Photo by Harrison Jones.

The House of Representatives passed an appropriations bill that contains five riders, or amendments, that curtail the District’s ability to govern itself, including repealing or blocking funding for two D.C. laws that have already been implemented.

One of the laws, the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Act, has been a target of House Republicans since its passage in 2014. It makes it illegal for employers to target workers over reproductive decisions like going on birth control, deciding to have a child, or opting for an abortion.

First, the House passed a disapproval resolution in 2015 to block it from ever becoming law (yes, Congress can do that). When the Senate never took up the bill, it became the law of the land.

Then last year, Gary Palmer (R-AL) introduced a rider to an appropriations bill to prevent the bill from being funded, which similarly passed in the House but never got traction in the Senate.

Palmer introduced the amendment again this year, writing an editorial last week that mischaracterized what the anti-discrimination law does. He said that it “would make it a crime for an organization to refuse to provide health insurance coverage for abortions,” but D.C. Code explicitly says that the law cannot be interpreted that way.

Palmer’s amendment still passed with a vote of 214-194, though D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton says she was able to convince 11 Republicans to vote against the measure. That vote was “scored,” meaning a number of advocacy groups used members’ ayes or nayes as part of a larger scorecard to determine where legislators stand on certain issues.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America and NARAL Pro-Choice America called on members to vote against the amendment, and Heritage Action and Concerned Women for America called on them to support it. All of them are scoring the vote.

Another of D.C.’s laws targeted in the appropriations bill is the Death With Dignity Act. The law, which allows physicians to prescribe life-ending drugs to people with terminal illnesses that give them less than six months to live, also survived an attempt to block it via the disapproval resolution process earlier this year.

But Republicans vowed that the fight was not over. It was targeted in President Donald Trump’s budget, and now through a budget rider in the House’s appropriations bill that would outright repeal it.

Three other D.C.-specific riders that made it into the appropriations bill are old stalwarts, like a measure that prevents the District from using locally raised funds to pay for abortions, to tax and regulate cannabis, and a repeal of D.C.’s budget autonomy referendum.

While Norton introduced her own amendment to strike the rider that repealed budget autonomy, it failed on party lines. Similar amendments that would’ve canceled out the marijuana, abortion, and Death With Dignity riders were deemed out of order by the House Rules Committee.

Norton says she is confident that she can keep many of these riders out of the final version of the bill in the Senate. “Basically, the House will always do the bad thing and you have to go to the Senate,” she told DCist.

The spending bill must be passed by December 8.

Updated to reflect that a rider would outright repeal the Death With Dignity Act.